When it comes to placing the full tilt boogie history of workers rights under the sociological microscope in this so called land of the free, such as child labor, mining labor disasters, slave labor wages and the corporate boot to keep the American worker under control academia chooses to neglect them as part of the currilum and would rather have you thinking about what you'll wear to the prom and who you'll end up with in the backseat of your car when the music ends that night and it's time to wrinkle the tux with a romp under the prom dress of Peggy Sue.
We learn that George Washington cannot tell a lie, but never told that he was also a pimp for prostitutes for the Continental Army importing prostitutes to keep the troops in the field happy with hookers. We are also told that Lincoln emancipated the slaves...but not that he forgot to put into place safety measures and full rights so for at least another hundred years the Black American was lynched, jailed and had their churches bombed and burned...in effect he was responsible for as many Black American deaths and pain as slavery...he was not an emancipator. He was an agitator who only wanted a second term.
History in the classroom? That's a funnier joke than Lenny Bruce and his Masked Man routine. This amigos y amigas is the fault of a curriculum designed to silence thought...you know...go, go, status quo! It's also the fault of the teachers for not ballsing up so do both share equally in creating a false impression of democracy and capitalsm as historically and inherently the basis of the American Dream. The American Dream for the American worker was and is more and more a Nightmare on Elm Street when it comes to workers.
The history of unions in America is a tapestry of travesty that was woven by corporate interests in bed with a corrupt congress who would turn tricks for a lobbiest waving a wad of cash as fast as a whore in a bordello spreads her legs for a client. Corporate interests over workers interest is the syphillis of democracy as Americans bend over and take it in the ass. They still do...we allow Monsanto to dildo us, Walmart to enslave low income workers while the Waltons live off their sweat, and don't forget Wall Street...capitalisms bully pulpit with a simple credo made famous by Gordon Gecko in the film "Wall Street"....GREED IS GOOD! Forget about liberty and justice for all. It's all a blow job by $10 dollar alley whore who is afraid to swallow.
As long as were talking about the American worker taking it in the ass, we move from anal to the annals of workers rights and one event among many stands out as a classic case of class warfare taken to capitalist extremes with the workers extremities gripped by the short hairs. The Ludlow Massacre in Colorado in 1914 was a vicious reminder of how vengeful a mining company could be in protecting there bottomline. This time it morphed into an attack on not only striking miners, but, their families of women and children who were killed in retaliation for their husbands actions. The killings were done in the name of corporate profits by the prophet of profiteering John D. Rockefeller and his son, Junior, owners of the mining company that gave the deadly orders to launch the assaults. Thanks to a phalanx of sympathic journalists who were on hand reporting on the carnage in words and photos, the Rockefellers were held responsibe in the court of public opinion for the actions that led to those deaths. The Rockefellers were critized from all levels of society, but in the long run they as usual prospered and still do to this day...and the miners and families killed are largely forgotten fodder for the "machine" that eats the worker alive every chance it gets. America...the beautiful...American capitalism is corporate cannibalism where the American worker is eaten alive and served with the very best wine available.
The Rocky Mountains region rocked and rolled with dissent when 1,200 coal miners went on strike in 1914 upsetting the mine owners boat at the Rockefeller owned mine operating under the name of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Located near Ludlow, not far from the town of Trinidad in southeastern Colorado, it was one of numerous strikes throughout the state by the workers against the tyrannical tyrants of coal capitalism. "King Coal" as the mining industry was dissected in the wondeful book by Upton Sinclair..Read it...better read then dead....you too can be a "read" agitator, or literate lefty too.
The Southern Colorado coal region caught the eye of coal operators as early as 1867, two years after the civil war ended. It was in fact discovered quite by accident during a survey by a team laying out plans for a rail route for the Kansas Pacific Railway. Lets face it, the intrusion of the Iron Horse not only displaced Native Americans from their traditional homeland, but, also was responsibe for the decimated decline of the American buffalo, a major source of food and clothing for Native Americans. These animals were killed in horrendous numbers to feed the growing army of rail workers who laid rails, rail spiked and rail split their way across the continent to feed the manifest destiny of the ravenous corporate apetite of acquisition. One thing about greed in the boardroom, it leads to unlocking the Pandora's Box of bottom line greed that can lead to tyrannical control of the worker in Orwellian proportions. So while the railroads wanted to keep their books in the black...the mine workers were seeing red instead. The red banner of revolt was beginning to unfurl and that red would soon be the blood of workers and their families.
By the year 1910, there were over 15,000 coal miners in Colorado with the largest employer, Colorado Fuel and Iron employing over 7,000 workers and controlling over 71,000 acres of coal rich acreage. It was all owned by the Rockefeller family and managed from comfort from their offices on Broadway on the Great White Way in the Big Apple, while the coal workers worked without a safety net in the coal black mines that were subject to gas explostions, cave ins and in the long term...black lung disease.
Death rates rapidly rose in the mines and by 1912 the death rate in Colorado was 7 workers for every 1,000 workers employed. (the national rate was 3 in 1,000) A US Senate House Committee issued a report stating "Colorado mines were safe for workers!" Pay scales were scandalous as miners were paid only for coal produced and not other work such as shoring up walls in mines with timbers for safety. That was unpaid labor by the workers who had to work for free on such projects for their own safety and to keep the mines open to produce profits for the profiteers of the East. In 1913 over one hundred mine workers were killed in Colorado alone. Meanwhile the Rockefellers dined on Oysters Rockefeller with about as much interest in the mine workers in their employ as Marie Antoinette had for the peasants in rebellion outside the castle gates.
The workers all lived in those dreaded company towns were all the land, stores and real estage were owned by the mine operators and basically keep the workers subdued and subject to their authority and to squash any thoughts of rebellion. Not only were their rules imposed that would have please Vlad the Impaler but workers were subject to curfews. All rules and curfews were enforced by hired squads of goons with machine guns and rifles loaded with soft point bullets...miners could not leave camps without permission and no strangers allowed in. This was enforced to keep the "red agitators" or union organizers at arms length from organizing the workers. If a worker protested at any of the conditions he and his family were evicted and their belongings destroyed.
The unionized mines nationwide were safer and Colorado miners had tried to organize since the first strike in the Rockies in 1883 but without sucess. Many mines in the west were unionized but mainly mines that were after gold and silver, and not coal. By the turn of the century, the United Mine Workers began to turn the union screw on companies by organizing coal mines in the west. They began to focus on the Rockefeller operation because of their tactics and treatment of workers. Rockefeller hired strike breakers to squash the unions and any attempt at a strike. Mostly from Mexico and from eastern Europe. The reason? Simple...language barriers to keep from talk of organizing or clandestine meetings. It was a vertible tower of Babel.
Suppression of union activity was commonplace but through clandestine organizing by 1913 the union present a list of seven demands on behalf of the workers. In true company fashion, the demands were rejected and in September teh UMW called a strike. The company moved swiftly and evicted the striker miners at gunpoint and they relocated to tent villages set up for them not far away by the UMW. The tents had wooden flors and cast iron stoves and the land had been leased by the union in advance anticipating the companies reaction to the strike. They say in real estate it all comes down to location, location, location and in this case the tent camps were strategically located at the entrance of canyons that led directly to the mines. This way the scabs or strike breakers had to run a deadly gauntlet if they wanted to pass into the pass. Battles were fought when the work whistle blew and the result was a few deaths on each side of the line. Enter now th dreaded Baldwin-Felts Detective agency, the same agency that would be involved in the West Virginia coal mine strikes and the assasiniation of their leader, Sid Hatfield.
They would fire shots into the tents at night killing and maiming whole families and at one point outfitted an amored car with a machine gun, christening it the Death Special to patrol the camps perimeters. It was built by the mining company itself in Pueblo, Colorado just up the road from the coal fields. Sniper attacks were common and miners had to dig foxholes in the tent to protect their families from bullets. In the 1950's Americans built bombshelters in preparation from attack from a foreign enemy...this time Americans were under attack from corporate interests back by US government collusion.
The strike could not be broken so in October, the Colorado governor sent in the Colorado National Guard whose sympathies, at least of the commanders were with the company and not the workers or the union. In one instance of "overkill" the commander of the guard unit ordered the tent colony destroyed and attacked when the workers and their families were away attending the funeral of some of the infants who had been killed by snipers a few days prior. Fortunately a press photographer, Lou Dold was there and photographed the guard attack.
Winter had come and gone in Colorado and in the spring of 1914 the state was running out of money to pay the National Guard so they were recalled, all except on unit and were formed into a new unit called "Troop A" which also consisted of company goons and guards and some Baldwin-Felts Detectives dressed in Guard Uniforms.
On April 20, the day after Orthodox Easter three "guardsmen" entered the tent camp and said they were there to free a man being held against his will. The camp leder Louis Tikas was asked to meet with the guard commander in Ludlow, a half mile away from the colony. While the meeting was underway machines were put in place on ridges above the tent village. Tikas saw this and ran back to the encampment and alerted the miners who had guns stashed away. Now they broke them out and battled the militia for a full day. A train came by at night and in sympathy with the miners let them and their families aboard to escpae to the hills. By 7 pm the tent village was in flames and the militia entere the camp looting it of every possession they could Tikas was still in the camp as he had refused to leave. He was held by militia members and beaten severely including having a rifle butt crack his skull. Two other miners also in the camp were treated similarly...later all three bodies were found shot dead with wounds to the backs of their heads. The bodies were placed along the railroad tracks and the militia would not let them be removed for burial until the railroad union stepped in and backed down the militia with miners support. During the battle...four women and eleven children had been hiding in the pit in their tent dug for protection. All died from suffocation and were burned to death when the fire broke out in the camp. It was now called the Ludlow Massacre and sympaties now were clearly behind the miners and the union. In addition to all the deaths of miners, women and children, unfortunately only three company guards and one National Guardsman were killed. Go for the headshots is my motto.
Response to the masscre by union workers throughout the state was swift and the unions issued a call to arms and workers and union leaders gathered up all the guns and ammo they could secure, ready to do battle which led to clandestine guerrilla warfare that would have made Che Guevara proud. The UMW openly supplied arms to workers at headquarters and over 1,000 armed pissed off union workers went on the hunt attacking every ununionized mine that lay in their path of retribution. In the process the the drove off or in a take no prisoners approach, killed off armed guards and set fire to the company buildings. Ludlow flared up again during this phase of the uprising and more killings occured when more militia engaged the miners in battle once again. President Woodrow Wilson who was an opponent of peace, sent in Federal troops to shoot to kill miners and militia in order to stop the violence (with violence? What a novel idea!) This time however, to be fair to Wilson, the Feds weren't after the miners...in fact they not only disarmed both sides but arrested members of both factions of the friction! Th UMW called off the strike on December 10, 1914. Striking workers were replaced and all in all 400 strikers were also arrested and over 300 were indicted for murder but only one was convicted, the leader of the strike John Lawson. His conviction was overturned by the Colorado Supreme court. Twenty two national guardsmen were also arrested including 10 officers and all were court martialed and no surprise, all were acquitted except for one who was given a reprimand.
Today the site of the massacre is quiet and quite unnoticed by the world at large, especially by the influx of tourists who flock to Colorado for a Rocky Mountian high, white water rafting, kayaking and snowboarding. Today only the whispers of ghosts inhabit the town of Ludlow which is a speck on the Rand McNally and in fact is a ghost town. The site was awarded status as a National Historic Landmark in 2009. So whle it is merely a forgotten footnote in the margin of the book of American civics, the Roekefellers still keep on truckin...along with Monsanto's, Walmarts and Wall Street..the battleground may have changed..but the battle still rages..only this time you are the cog in a vast machine. What are you willing to do and sacrifice for your rights and freedom? The Patriot Act is eroding your rights, we engage in costly and deadly wars of our instigation around the globe killing thousands in other countries including our own soldiers, workers still stuggle, veterans benefits are being cut along with mental health programs and the homeless still roam where Hunter Thompsons buffalo roam. Will you stand up and take it like a man or a woman? Or will you continue to bend over and take it in the ass? Even if it's only to make change in your own community, plant a communtiy garden, volunteer at a homeless or womens shelter, help a disabled vet, and work to feed a child. Most of all support the worker and stop military violence. Remember that kid in Tianamen Square in China? Man he had balls! Do you?